Mass Transit Oedipus

by Marie Lecrivain

While reading the Santa Monica Daily Press over coffee and a steak burrito, I wondered if the lead story about a John Doe found dead on the beach is the same weirdo who sat next to me on the MTA 333 bus yesterday – the one who renounced god the father. He said his mother was god, that the sea was his mother, and that a mother wouldn't hurt her child. He revealed that he'd just been released from jail, and that he was going to go visit his mother to tell her how much he loved her. He asked me where he could buy some daffodils. His bloodshot eyes, holding-tank aroma and spastic hand gestures inspired my silence. As he got up from his seat, the last thing he told me was that he didn't believe in my gods or this person's god or that person's god or anyone else's... just Mother... whom he loved.

6S

Marie Lecrivain is the executive editor of poeticdiversity: the litzine of Los Angeles, and the fiction editor for Magnapoets. She playfully moonlights as an 8th level whip wielder in Dante's Inferno, and is a writer in residence at her apartment. She's been published in various journals.